Tuesday, March 09, 2004

i saw the passion of the christ today, and i can't say that i loved it or i hated it, but i will say that it made me think. not so much about the religious ideas surrounding the crucifixion but about the process of the movie and what it accomplished. i came up with a few conclusions.

** to start, my medical-mind has a huge quibble with the film, and though i know it doesn't really have anything to do with the point of it, i found myself utterly distracted from the quarter-point onward by the fact that the violence is ridiculous. it is ridiculous. no one would have lived through that scourging. never mind the fact that the 40 lashes were actually 72 (i counted), when they dragged him away, there were about 6 units of blood left on the ground - this is certainly enough to send someone into shock such that they would certainly be unconscious if not dead already. if that wasn't enough, the crown of thorns would have certainly finished the job - the skull is one of the most vascularized areas of the body, which means that when it is pierced, it bleeds profusely. to expect that a person with that kind of injury externally (i won't go into what must have occurred as internal injuries) would then be able to walk let alone carry anything is absurd. and i'm sure there are all sorts of arguments why this doesn't really matter, or how God gave jesus the strength to keep going to carry out this ultimate plan, but i think most who belive in God would agree that God made our bodies, including the way they work. if jesus was, indeed, a human form of God, his physical body would be just as fragile as anyone's, no matter how transcendant his spirit. this may not matter to most who see the film, but it mattered to me, because i felt that the complete lack of realism in this aspect meant that the rest of the movie lost some meaning.

** i wasn't at all impressed by the acting, particularly jim caviezel as jesus. granted, he spent most of the movie bleeding everywhere and dying, which didn't exactly give him much range to work with, but overall, i was underwhelmed by the portrayal of the characters. the most impressive was pilate, followed by mary (jesus mother), though neither had a whole lot of range either.

** visually, it was a beautiful film. the attention to details, even in the areas of violence, contributed to an artistically stunning film. though the violence was disturbing and extremely gross, it made me feel things. i don't always feel things while watching a movie. but during this film i was in turn saddened, grossed out, frustrated, exasperated, and angry. not many films make me go through so many emotions that haven't been manufactured by plot points. i think that less could have been more where the violence was concerned, but that was mel gibson's choice, and i'm sure there are many who disagree with it.

** i found it ironic, given the amount of blood shed by jesus, that i saw this film using a free pass that i got from donating blood. i can't really recommend paying to see it (though i guess you could say i paid in blood, all pun intended) but if you have a chance to see it for free, it may be worth the discussion it can create more than the entertainment of something like "eurotrip".

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

okay, so i got sucker-punched by bryan for not updating my blog more frequently, and my answer is this...i have a real job. so there.

that being said, here are a few little tidbits until i can come up with something really interesting to say.

-- taxes suck. i just finished mine, and goddam local tax in maryland just ate half my federal refund. AND, someone told me today that they read in a magazine that maryland has the ugliest population in the country. to be fair, florida had the stupidest population, and i think that is worse.

-- i regret to say that i watched the finale of average joe...it started out innocently - i started watching the show halfway through when i realized that a person i knew from my cleveland days came on as one of the "hunks" who also happened to be a jackass, and i really only wanted to watch until he got kicked off. but the part of me that requires completion in all things couldn't leave it alone. it also sucked. see bryan's blog for the whole recap. i agree wholeheartedly with all his conclusions and i would add only that my first thought when she revealed the "shocking secret" was "who's fabio?"

-- i got to see the chihuly exhibit in columbus this weekend, and also got to see leno tagliapietra's work at the columbus art museum. glass is beautiful.

-- golfers are big freaking babies. i watched the match play between tiger woods and davis love III with my dad this weekend. if it wasn't tiger complaining that people were TAKING PICTURES of him (the nerve), it was davis love having a fan ejected for chanting "no love" during the match (which he deserved, as he was sucking terribly). i like to think that for prize money of $1.2 million and $700,000 respectively, they ought to be able to play through some heckling.

Friday, January 30, 2004

An Ode To The Rounders...

Everyday we've assembled, white coats and papers in tow...we huddle together around the tables that move and talk about the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the gut. Decisions are made and suggestions discussed. On our good days, people are made well, on our bad days, they get sicker.

And in between the seriousness, there were smiles, and laughter, and jokes, and looks, and nudges, and fun...lots of fun. In some cases there were train whistles, and in others there were bumper cars, and as recently as today there were whispers and giggles. And though a new team of rounders will start on Monday, the January group will always be legendary.

Monday, January 26, 2004

So one of my new year's resolutions was to post to my blog more frequently. Clearly that's not been happening....but I'm gonna try...I promise.

I also planned to make my blog less of a downer...post more happy and interesting things....but as you'll see, that's not happening yet either.

I watched a man die today. It was a completely surreal and crazy experience. I've seen many dead people before...I work in a hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit, so death unfortunately comes with the territory. And there's definite truth to the idea that people are not themselves when they are hooked up to machines...somehow they seem less human. And I don't mean that in a dispassionate way, but rather a practical way.

But today, it was different - it was faster. We've all seen how it happens on ER, and though there isn't any fast-paced music or cameras spinning around the room, the rest of it was more or less accurate. There are maybe 20 people of different specialties around the patient, people yell out orders, and everyone wears protective gear. They "shock" the person in hopes of getting a heart rhythm to work with, but the paddles don't actually make the person jump a foot off the bed. The alarms aren't nearly as loud as they are on TV, and the "time of death" call is much less dramatic. All of this is to be expected.

What wasn't expected was seeing the patient sitting up on the side of the bed 40 minutes before he was pronounced dead. I didn't expect that there would actually be blood all over the floor. I didn't expect that the clean-up after the code would take more than twice as long as the code itself. I didn't expect to hear the attending physician speak to the family and break the bad news over the phone. I didn't expect for my friends the residents to be as shaken by it as I was (the fact that the patient was alert and oriented up until his heart stopped beating seemed to make people more uncomfortable). And somehow I wasn't prepared for the ease with which the staff went on with our day when the lives of the patient's family had changed so dramatically.

Death is a funny thing...its something I can say for certain that I have no understanding of, and my experience today didn't make things any clearer. There are any number of cliches that are often used when someone dies, especially someone we know, but somehow they don't fit when someone we don't know dies in front of our eyes. And there is no eloquent way to end the post about this experience, I just felt like I needed to document it somehow.